Introduction

As we turn to our seventh ancient exegete, we move out of the orbit of the Greek speaking Eastern church to the Latin western church and Rome. In a previous paper, we saw that Jerome could be considered as a bridge between these two great streams of exegesis: the Greek and Latin. Given his knowledge of both Greek and Latin, our subject, Marius Victorinus serves a similar function. Over a century later, Boethius described him as “almost the most learned orator of his time”.[1] Jerome also gives a brief account of Victorinus in his De Viris Illustribus ('On Illustrious Men'), Ch 101, saying:

Victorinus, an African by birth, taught rhetoric at Rome under the emperor Constantius and in extreme old age, yielding himself to faith in Christ wrote books against Arius, written in dialectic style and very obscure language, books which can only be understood by the learned. He also wrote Commentaries on the Epistles.[2]

Bruce provides the following timeline of the salient events of Victorinus’ life.[3] Gaius Marius Victorinus (c. AD 300-370) was born around AD 300, a native of the Roman province of Africa. In about AD 340 he left Africa for Rome, where he taught rhetoric from around AD 340-355. In this period—when he was a convinced pagan—he wrote his secular works: his grammatical works, works on rhetoric and logic, translations of works by Aristotle and Porphyry, and translations of and commentaries on Neoplatonic books. For the purpose of comparison, Jerome was born in this period, in AD 347. He was already thought an old man when he was converted, probably between AD 353, the date of the erection of the statue in his honour in the Forum, and AD 359. Augustine was born in AD 354. Victorinus was converted sometime in the mid-350s, after which he wrote his first Christian works on the Trinity. Around AD 359 he composed his work Against Arius. Victorinus in that work refers to the recent excommunication of the Arian bishops Valens and Ursacius, also occuring at some time immediately before his writing in AD 359. AD 361 marked the accession of Emperor Julian the Apostate, and AD 362 was the year of Julian’s ban on Christians from professorships of rhetoric in Rome. At this point Victorinus retired from his academic post rather than renounce Christianity.[4] He died around AD 370. In AD 386, probably some 15 years after Victorinus’ death, Augustine and Simplicianus talk about Victorinus’ journey to faith, which has an effect on Augustine, who is soon after converted, following in Victorinus' footsteps from Oratory to faith.

Augustine in Confessions, Book 8, Chapters 2-5, recounts his conversation about Victorinus in AD 387 with Simplicianus, who later became Bishop of Milan from AD 397, succeeding Ambrose. Augustine as a rhetorician had read Victorinus’ translations of secular works from Greek to Latin. Simplicianus himself had known Victorinus intimately many years previously, and described him as a learned old man, highly skilled in the liberal sciences, who had read, criticised, and explained many philosophers, taught many noble senators, and earned a statue of himself for his work as a rhetorician. Though Victorinus’ eloquence had defended Rome’s idolatory for many years, he submitted to baptism as a Christian in his old age, at some time in the mid-350s. He had become a Christian through the reading and study of the Scriptures, at first not openly, but secretly. When Victorinus described his own secret conversion to Simplicianus about AD 355, he replied: “I will not believe it, nor will I rank you among the Christians unless I see you in the Church of Christ”—for Victorinus was fearful of offending his pagan friends with his Christian faith.

But some time afterwards, Victorinus said to Simplicianus, “Let us go to the church; I wish to be made a Christian. ” He came to publicly profess his faith, and as he rose to speak, the assembled church recognized him and murmured “Victorinus! Victorinus!”—and with joy heard him pronounce the true faith with boldness. But it was costly, in that in AD 361 the Emperor Julian the Apostate forbade Christians from teaching grammar and oratory, and so Victorinus abandoned his professorship.

Such is a potted summary of Augustine’s account of Victorinus.[5] And Augustine after this meeting with Simplicianus followed Victorinus’ footsteps in becoming a Christian.

As has been indicated, Victorinus’ earliest Christian works were on the Trinity (AD 355-60). But at some time after AD 360, he wrote his commentaries on Paul’s Epistle, in the order, first to the Galatians, then Ephesians, Philippians, and then other Epistles of Paul. Victorinus’ commentaries were written in Latin and are available in Migne, Patrologica Latina: Galatians (Migne, PL 8:1145d-1198b), Ephesians (Migne, PL, 8:1235a-1294d), and Phillipians (Migne, PL, 1197c-1236a).

Victorinus On Ephesians 2:8-9

The Old Latin version of Ephesians 2:8-9 reads in translation:

For you have been saved by grace through faith. And this is not from you, it is a gift of God; it is not from works, lest perchance someone boast.

On this passage, Victorinus comments as follows, as translated by Stephen Andrew Cooper[6]:

2,8 For you have been saved by grace through faith. The apostle has explained plainly that there ought to be faith on our part, but we ought believe only in Christ. Because this [salvation] is ours in this way alone, we have not been saved by our merit but by the grace of God. To sum it up, Paul adds the following: 2,9 [7] And this is not from you, it is a gift of God; it is not from works, lest perchance someone boast. Because we have been saved, Paul claims, it is God’s grace. So you too Ephesians, because you have been saved, it is not from you, it is a gift of God. Nor is it from your works, but it is the grace of God, it is the gift of God—not by your merit (meritum). Works are one thing, and our merit another, whence he has differentiated the not from you by saying not from works. Certainly, above and beyond works which are called for every day in our duties toward the poor and other good deeds (but also because one can obtain merit on the basis of duty and religious observance, on the basis of chastity and abstinence), it can be neither by your works[.] So he includes both, saying not from you, nor from works—and then he adds lest someone boast. For he who imagines that the reward (meritum) was merited by his works, wants the reward to be of his own doing (don’t ask me how) and not of the one who bestowed it—and this is boasting.

Victorinus’ comments on this passage seem to take the latter negative formulations (v. 8: ‘and this is not from you’; v. 9: ‘it is not from works’) as explaining the former (v. 8: For you have been saved by grace through faith […] v. 9: it is a gift of God). For Victorinus, the negative formulations ‘not from yourselves’ and ‘not from works’ excludes two distinct possibilities that could rival grace as the source of salvation. [8] Cooper considers that Victorinus paraphrases ‘grace’ above as ‘a gift of God’ and that ‘the gift character of the relationship of human beings to God through Christ permeates his rendition of Pauline soteriology'. [9]

While Victorinus does not specifically deal with the grammatical issue of whether the demonstrative 'this' refers to 'faith', 'grace', or the conceptual antecedent of 'salvation by grace', what he says almost certainly supports the ‘salvation by grace’ conceptual antecedent. Thus, he comments: ‘So you too Ephesians, because you have been saved, it is not from you, it is a gift of God. Nor is it from your works, but it is the grace of God, it is the gift of God—not by your merit.’ That is, the issue for Victorinus is not the source or origin of faith, but whether the salvation is merited. It is 'salvation' for Victorinus, and not 'faith', that is the gift from God. Victorinus says that faith is ‘our part’, but the salvation is of grace. The conceptual antecedent 'salvation by grace' of the demonstrative is almost certainly what Victorinus holds.

Wider Soteriology

Victorinus wants to avoid any sense that our salvation is merited either by ourselves or our good works. So on Ephesians 2:6b, he comments:

He did not make us deserving, since we did not receive these things by our own merit but by the grace and goodness of God. […] But all this, as he often asserts and I insist, is in Christ. For in him is the whole mystery of the resurrection, both ours and of all others.[10]

It is clear that despite Victorinus’ view that the gift of God is ‘salvation by grace’, more widely he does hold to some form of God’s enablement. Stephen Andrew Cooper says of Victorinus: ‘His conclusion is that in both cases [i.e. ‘not from works’, ‘not from yourselves’] God is the one who furnishes believers with the wherewithal to perform such practices.[11] Cooper draws attention to Victorinus’ comments on Galatians 5:4, which can help clarify his view of the relationship between grace and merit, and comments as follows:

[Victorinus' comments on Galatians 5:4] ‘The whole power of someone who believes in Christ rests in the grace of God. Grace, however, is not based on one’s merits but on God’s mercy’ (gratia autem non ex meritis, sed ex dei pietate est). [Then Cooper continues:] He [Victorinus] has established two things here: first, that the power to believe is attributed to grace; and then that this grace itself arises from God’s mercy, and is not a response to any merit of our own.

That 'power to believe rests in grace' suggests that Victorinus holds to faith being a gift from God, even if he does not see Ephesians 2:8-9 teaching it. Cooper further brings out two passages from the commentary on Ephesians to present this same picture. On Ephesians 1:14, Victorinus comments,

[T]his matter belongs more to the glory and grace of God than to our merit. For the gift which is received is great beyond merit: the glory belongs to the one who gave it, not to the who has received.[12]

And on Ephesians 2:7, Victorinus says:

God did not give us what we deserve (non enim nobis reddidit meritum), as we certainly do not receive these things because of our merits but because of the grace and goodness of God.’[13]

Surprisingly, Cooper regards that Victorinus ‘probably remained within the bounds of the synergistic understanding of the relationship between divine grace and the human will typical of both Greeks and Latins’.[14] However, Cooper also observes that:

[N]owhere in his commentaries does Victorinus suggest that some qualities in those to whom the offer is made, and for whom Christ came, elicited God’s mercy. Rather, God’s salvific activity follows from the divine awareness of the creature’s weakness and need. Victorinus never says that the predestining of souls involves divine consultation of their future righteousness; rather, whatever holiness souls come to possess is clearly stated to be the result of God’s predestination.[15]

This sets Victorinus apart from Origen, the Eastern exegetes, and Jerome, who all held to some form of predestination in accordance with prescience or foreknowledge of foreseen merits. As Victorinus comments on Ephesians 1:4:

So God predestined these souls before the foundation of the world; God chose them so that they might become holy—that is, that having received the Spirit they would be strengthened, and having put off all the weaknesses that could befall them they would become Spirit.[16]

Victorinus discusses what is owing to God in salvation and what is up to us:

For it is not by means of our own power (virtue nostra) that we have been turned back to spirit: we also have received the Spirit of Christ through the blood of Christ (per sanguinem Christi spiritum accepimus). Therefore, our sins are remitted us and are forgiven through the grace of God; we do not abandon them by our own power. This alone belongs to our power: to believe Christ and to live spiritually for the sake of Christ. [17]

It is hard to know what to make of the fact Victorinus holds that we cannot abandon our sins by our own power but that it rests in our power to believe. Does he mean 'after the receipt of the Spirit' that we have power to believe? If so, his statement is quite consistent with later Augustinianism. Does he mean that all people have power to believe? Then why is it that they cannot also turn from sin by their own power? Stephen Andrew Cooper comments that ‘Victorinus clearly believes that the divine initiative in Christ precedes faith and the spiritual life. The nature of Christian hope, as he says on Galatians 5:3, is “hope in the Spirit, in faith, and in the justification of God; our hope is not based on works.” What is hoped for is “eternal life” which—he is again careful to gloss—“would be supplied... on the basis of God’s grace, not works or merits. But this happens through the Spirit”.’[18]

Cooper sees an anticipation of the mature Augustine’s doctrine of prevenient grace in Marius Victorinus’ commentaries, citing Schindler and Harnack. I quote the following extended extract from Cooper’s, Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians, 169:

Yet, as other scholars from Gore to Harnack have noted, ‘a definite approach to Augustine’s doctrine can be ascertained in the West in the second half of the fourth century.’ [citing Alfred Schindler, ‘Gnade und Freiheit: Zum Vergleich zeischen den griechischen und Kirchenvätern’ ZTK 62 (1965), 178-95, 184.] I quote Schindler’s further remarks at length here, because they present the best summary of the parallels between Augustine and Victorinus on the issues under discussion:

What is now of relevance to Augustine’s position is that it was thus not something completely new in the history of Latin theology. Marius Victorinus … had around the middle of the fourth century already spoken of justification from faith and against all works-righteousness; he had already taught an unalloyed predestination and activity of God prior to and in our will. That speaks against seeing Augustine’s doctrine of grace as a simple rediscovery of Paul. Rather, like Victorinus’ teaching on the subject, it is to be primarily considered as a special connection of Latin Christianity with Neoplatonic determinism. Plotinus had already brought a general conception of providence and the free will of the rational creature into a unified deterministic system which nonetheless clearly differentiated itself from the Stoic doctrine of heimarmenē. An analogy to this in the cause of Augustine, is the fact that this doctrine of predestination finds place in his teaching on general providence and creation. [citing Schindler, op cit, 186.] The case for literary influence of Victorinus on Augustine is now considerably stronger than previously, as we shall see in Chapter 6.

It is instructive that Schindler can sketch such significant parallels between Augustine and Victorinus, while maintaining the accepted view that ‘no direct influence of his writing on Augustine can be assumed’. [citing Schindler, op cit, 167] The case for literary influence of Victorinus on Augustine is now considerably strong than previously… .

Conclusion

Victorinus was clearly a learned scholar and had substantial knowledge of both Greek and Latin as a teacher of rhetoric and translator of Greek philosophical works. He was in no way ignorant of Greek, though a Latin. His comments on Ephesians 2:8-9 point away from ‘faith’ being 'the gift of God' in the passage, and toward the antecedent of the demonstrative being the concept of ‘salvation by grace’. In this he offers a similar view that later 600 years later in the Eastern church would be articulated by Theophylact as an alternative to the mainstream view of 'faith' being the gift of God, and not from ourselves. In Victorinus' words:

Because this [salvation] is ours in this way alone, we have not been saved by our merit but by grace of God. [...] Because we have been saved, Paul claims, it is God’s grace. So you too Ephesians, because you have been saved, it is not from you, it is a gift of God. Nor is it from your works, but it is the grace of God, it is the gift of God—not by your merit (meritum).

Victorinus believed that this salvation by grace was unmerited, and that this was the teaching of Paul in Ephesians 2:8-9. He held that for our part we believe, but did not consider Ephesians 2:8-9 spoke of the divine origin of our faith. The ‘salvation by grace’ was not from us, nor was it from works. It was not merited but was the grace and gift of God. Interestingly, however, it would seem that the seeds of Augustinian unalloyed unconditional election not based on foreseen faith and merit can be found in Victorinus, and the later Augustine does have theological progenitors in the Latin west.

[1] F F Bruce, “Marius Victorinus and His Works,” The Evangelical Quarterly, 18 (1946): 132-153 at 132 at https://earlychurch.org.uk/pdf/victorinus_bruce.pdf accessed on 5 June 2017.

[2] E C Richardson (trs), P Schaff and H Wace (eds), NPNF2, Vol 3 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co, 1892), revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight, <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2708.htm>.

[3] Bruce, “Marius Victorinus and His Works,” 134-5.

[4] Ibid, 133-136.

[5] J G Pilkington (trs), P Schaff (ed), NPNF1 Vol 1 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co, 1887), revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight, <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/110108.htm>.

[6] Stephen Andrew Cooper, Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians (Oxford: OUP, 2005), 167-8; idem, Metaphysics and Morals in Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 67.

[7] Edwards provides the following alternative translation: ‘The fact that you Ephesians are saved is not something that comes from yourselves. It is the gift of God. It is not from your works, but it is God’s grace as God’s gift, not from anything you have deserved. Our works are one thing, what we deserve another. Hence he distinguishes the two phrases “not from yourselves” and “not from works”. Remember that there are faithful works that ought to be displayed daily in service to the poor and other good deeds’: Marius Victorinus, Epistle to the Ephesians, 1.2.9 (translated from BT 1972: 152 [1256A-B]), in M J Edwards (trs), T C Oden (ed), Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians: ACCS (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2005), 126-7.

[8] Cooper, Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians, 167-8.

[9] Ibid, 168.

[10] Edwards & Oden, Galatians, Ephesians, Phillipians, 125, translating Marius Victorinus, Epistle to the Ephesians, 1.2.7 in BT 1972:152 [1255C].

[11] Cooper, Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians, 167.

[12] Ibid, 167-8.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid, 169.

[15] Ibid, 168.

[16] Marius Victorinus, ‘Philosophical Excursus on Eph 1:4’, cited in Cooper, Marius Victorinus Commentary on Galatians, 168 fn 160.

[17] Stephen A Cooper, ‘The Platonist Christianity of Marius Victorinus’, at page 19, at Religions 2016, 7(10), 122; doi:10.3390/rel7100122, accessed at http://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/7/10/122 on 7 June 2017.

[18] Ibid.